Newsletter: 06/12/2012

Office News

Priscilla has been back with us exactly a month. Her baby Rinah is doing well, she's a lovely happy little thing and sleeping well like a baby should. So if you've any tricky accounting questions you're still waiting patiently on, the doctor is "in".

This afternoon we're having our Christmas outing (mini golf again, we're getting pretty good now) so the office will be unattended from about 1pm. Feel free to call me on my mobile 021 636876 should anything urgent come up. We will be open over the Christmas-New Year period except for the statutory days.

Russell Bell

Fastbase notes

We have made changes to customer notes. These changes should make it easier to organise notes and keep track of upcoming tasks.

We've changed the Types of notes you can have. The types used to be Active, Alert, Accounts, or Completed. Now the available types are as follows:

Alert - special attention or warning noteOpportunity - a new or possible sales opportunitySales - sales activity, in between opportunity and fulfilmentFulfilment - satisfying an order, in between accepting an order and deliverySupport - post-sales or post-delivery supportAccount - payment or credit concerns

Under Customer Enquiry the notes are now displayed on tabs. Each different type of note is shown on a different tab. The tabs are configurable, one tab can show more than one type of note.

Notes can have a To Do date and a Finish date. Alerts are a special kind of note, they display in a pop-up screen when certain actions are performed on a customer in Fastbase, e.g. customer order creation, customer enquiry.

There's more to it than this, give us a call if you've questions. We plan to make further changes to notes including the ability to link customer quotes and orders to notes, and improvements to the calendar view so up-coming tasks are visible on the main screen of Fastbase.

Warning message when sell price is below cost

We have added a pop-up warning message for selling parts below cost on customer quotes, orders, and invoices. Already when the gross profit of a line-item of a customer quote, order, or invoice is below minimum, a red warning message appears on the line entry screen. This minimum GP can be set under Utilities - Modules - AR - Credit Control & Security - Minimum Sales GP%. However before now there wasn't any message when the net price of the line item is below the cost price.

We have changed Fastbase to pop-up a warning message when the selling price is less than cost price on customer quotes, orders, and invoices. If the line-item Save button is clicked and the Net Price is below the cost price on line-item entry screen, Fastbase displays a pop-up warning, "Selling Price is below cost", with an Ok/Cancel option. OK accepts the price and saves the line-item as usual. This new feature is controlled via a setup option, contact Fastbase if you'd like it enabled.

Non-stock parts - cost-price validation on customer orders

Currently, when a user enters a non-stock part into a line-item on a customer order or invoice, Fastbase will allow the user to modify the cost price for the line item. The cost price defaults to the cost price of the part. If the cost of the part is zero, then the cost of the line item will be zero if the user does not change it.

We have changed Fastbase so that the user is required to enter a cost price greater than zero on non-stock line items of sales orders and invoices. If the Cost Price is not greater than zero, Fastbase displays a pop-up warning "No cost price entered". This feature is enabled via a setup option, get in touch if you're interested.

Receipt printing

We've recently made software changes for a customer to allow receipt printing for cash sales an their outlet store. When they enter a cash sale in Fastbase, an invoice and one or more receipts of the corresponding type (eftpos, cash, credit card, cheque or a combination) are generated in Fastbase. The receipts are setup as different transaction types in Fastbase so they show up separately on the bank rec. Fastbase communicates with the receipt printer so they now print small, tear-off customer receipt/invoice dockets from Fastbase whenever one of these cash sales is made. These software changes were done somewhat specific to their needs, but if you have a similar requirement we may be able to help.

Changes to quote summary and quote expiry reports

We have changed the Quote Summary and Quote Expiry reports. You can now filter both reports by selected parts. In addition, the order of lines on the Quote Expiry report is now configurable via an on-screen option. You can sort the report by salesperson, customer, part, or operator. Previously the report would always group the lines by salesperson. We've added a new field to the Quote Summary Report so that you can filter cancelled quotes according to the reason they were cancelled.

Report original operator & salesperson on invoice register

We've changed the Invoice Register Reports so that you can report any customer credits on the report under the operator/salesperson who entered the original invoice.

Print customer special pricing

We have changed Fastbase so that it is possible to print a list of customer-specific pricing from the Customer Special Pricing screen, for a particular part. Already it is possible to view and print a list of all parts with special pricing for a particular customer from Customer Enquiry/Maintenance - Discounts - Print Report. However, although it has long been possible to view a list of all customers that have special prices for a particular part (under Part Enquiry/Maintenance - More Options - Customer Special Pricing) there was no print function here.

We've added a Print button under Part Enquiry / Maintenance - More Options - Customer Special Pricing. This prints a report with one line per customer, with the customer name, special price, discount, update date, and expiry date.

Newsletters

Select from the following list of newsletters that have been sent out.

28/11/2013 Office News, Quoting for items that aren't recorded as parts in Fastbase, Stream-lined entry of new part assembly transactions, Sorting of customer notes on the appointments screen, Maintaining a customer note - "Complete" button save and exit